VMware hosting is at the forefront of cloud hosting solutions because of it's proven resilience. In this guide we will discuss what hosted VMware solutions look like and how to deploy your own.

What is VMware Hosting?

VMware hosting is a form of cloud computing where the hypervisor used is VMware ESXi. The ESX hypervisor is a very mature and efficient piece of code with a small footprint, which performs the function of running virtual machines. Other hypervisors include Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix Xen.

VMware were one of the first organizations to produce a hypervisor and have continued to lead the market with a suite of programs designed to increase resilience and availability.

VMware hosting service providers offer the ability to host a virtual machine based on the ESXi hypervisor.

How do cloud hosting environments perform?

VMware hosting service providers offer the ability to host your virtual machines in a shared multi-tenant environment thus reducing the costs that would be otherwise incurred by building out your own platform. The performance of hosting providers varies greatly depending on the underlying architecture. Although VMware makes multiple high availability features available in its software not all providers use them (largely depending on cost).

One of the most useful features is called Dynamic Resource Scheduling or DRS. This system ensures that virtual machines are evenly spread across the hardware platform. DRS performs this task by moving running virtual machines (without downtime) to physical servers that are best placed to serve the virtual machines requirements. For example, a virtual machine with high memory requirements may be moved to the physical host with the most physical memory available. By constantly balancing the load in this way, VMware systems ensure that virtual machines can perform to their allocated resources.

What infrastructure does VMware run on?

VMware can run on many different hardware architectures and thus it makes choosing a suitable provider more difficult. Many providers do not disclose their underlying platform specification and these should be treated with caution. Of particular note is SAN storage as this greatly affects the overall performance of virtual machines running on the platform. At the lower end of the market hosting companies use open source SANs based on cheaper hardware. For business users these providers are to be avoided. At the other end of the scale some providers use high end SAN systems found mostly in corporate environments. For most organizations a balance can be found in providers operating mid market SANs such as EqualLogic or NetApp. These systems offer excellent performance at a reasonable cost to the VMware hosting service provider.

What other systems are available?

Microsoft Hyper-V is popular among some organizations because of it's tight integration with Windows Server operating systems. If your organization uses only Microsoft servers Hyper-V may offer better performance. The Microsoft hypervisor is a late comer to the virtualization marketplace but has made some inroads to higher end deployments.

Conclusion

For most businesses VMware hosting offers the right balance of resilience and performance. It is however important to do your own research on service providers to ensure they can provide the level of service you require.

Klaus Vordermann is an independent cloud architect and an expert on VMware systems.

For further information on VMware hosting please visit http://www.stratogen.com